The music of Indo-China hardly differs in essentials from that of China, and presents much the same peculiarity in comparison with our own. On the other hand, the music of India is quite distinct, and presents only a few surface similarities to the Mongolian. Hindoo music, according to Captain Day,[15] has lost the primitive purity of Aryan times. The theoretical division of the octave into twenty-two quarter-tones, recorded in Sanscrit books, finds no practical application in modern usage. As in Chinese music, harmony is non-existent; for Hindoo music is purely melodic, and the _Vina_, the seven-stringed lute used as an accompanying instrument, merely doubles the voice part. But Hindoo music is built, as we have said, upon a system of seven-tone or heptatonic scales which offers far greater opportunity for effect than the pentatonic system of the Chinese. It has, moreover, infinitely more rhythmic variety and its rhythms are triple rather than duple, as is the case with the Chinese. They are capricious and elastic (this due, in part no doubt, to Mohammedan influences), and are usually strongly marked. One of the most characteristic features in Hindoo music, which has no counterpart in Chinese, is the _Raga_,[16] or traditional type-melody to which texts of varying character are sung. Some of the _ragas_ are especially consecrated to gods and heroes. In general Hindoo airs are marked by long melodic passages, often of no definite design. There are three general divisions: _gana_ (vocal music), _vadya_ (instrumental music), and _nytria_ (dance music). The Hindoos divide all instruments into four classes: quite unlike the Chinese classification: stringed instruments; those with membranes sounded by percussion; those struck in pairs; and those which sound when blown. A Sanscrit notation (characters for notes and signs or words for other details) indicates pitch and duration.